Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Amanda Brooks of Bound, Not Gagged posts the story of a 40-year-old business owner and mother of three who was arrested while moonlighting as an escort. One needn’t favor legalization of sex work (as I do) to appreciate either her story or the following, really fucking critical point:

When I called the police after being beaten by my first husband, they refused to protect me. In fact, they blamed me for his drinking and womanizing. Even after the doctors told the cops that I was one blow from having my skull shattered, they blamed me. When I was brutally raped on a date rape, kicking and screaming, and went to the police, they did nothing. They blamed me because I’d been drinking. And, you know, for being female. Great. So now I’m happily making money, stimulating both the economy and the gentlemen of the area, and here they are banging down my door. Like the Gestapo. They told me they were “protecting” me. From what? As an escort, I could afford condoms, blood screens, regular medical checks. Gentlemen who are willing to pay for sex are, in my experience, much more respectful than the ones who expect it for free. The ones who raped and battered me were getting free sex. The ones who paid, were kind and respectful.

She said it here.

Point #1: the police (or, more correctly, society and its instructions to and constraints on police) aren’t particularly effective at protecting women from assault, abuse, rape, or battery. Consequently anyone who argues they’re trying to “protect” the sex workers they rescue is a liar.

Point #2: Considering the conservative bona fides of your average anti-prostitution activist, her words about the differences between men who pay for sex and the men who expect it for free ought to resonate with Über-conservative silverback Newt Gingrich’s repeated point that humans have an astonishing tendency to abuse and neglect that which they don’t pay for. I happen to believe Gingrich is mostly batshit insane, but that shouldn’t be a problem for conservatives. The point remains, though, that in the eyes of their abusers there really doesn’t appear to be much more consideration, nor less resentment, of sex workers who charge men for money, and “ordinary” sex-partners who don’t.

Point #3: How exactly is it the case that notifying a sex worker’s employer (who, fortunately in this case, was also her daylight-business partner) “protecting” her? The common reaction for employers (all too common!) is to find cause to fire the sex worker, with the result that her odds of leaving sex work go down. And her odds of having to return to sex work go up.

Point #4: None of this implies that all sex workers are hearty, happy self-determined entrepreneurs. Many are not. Many, in fact, not only don’t enjoy their work but are trapped either by circumstance, conscription, or outright coercion! It’s not exactly clear to me, however, how making their work or even their customers illegal improves anyone’s odds of getting out or moving on. Based on conversations with individuals who’ve made poor choices in the past, it’s not clear to me at all how an arrest record, let alone a conviction record, let alone a jail record, let alone public record of one’s activities, makes any form of employment other than either marginal/minimum-wage or criminal ones possible.

Point #5: If society and/or the police really were interested in protecting sex workers they’re fucking protect sex workers instead of, well, policing them. Instead of arresting them they’d let sex workers put their numbers in speed dial. Instead of arresting them they’d establish clear relationships with sex workers and sex-worker alliances to instead police of the very-large number of people who currently get away with raping, robbing, roughing up, and murdering sex workers (and, cough, non-sex workers.)

Point #6: As I said above, you don’t have to like prostitution to see the arguably-intractable problems with current policies regarding its legality.

Jed Lewison of Daily Kos nicely summarizes the recently announced resignation of extremist “family values” Congressman Mark Souder. One key point? Turns out the “interviewer” in a campaign-related video on the importance of promoting abstinence and chastity was Souder’s non-marital parter.

As you know, I’m usually very harsh about the twits-vs-substance nature of these scandals, where in people enjoy the schadenfreude of a public scold’s downfall for canoodling while missing the larger point. And I’m feeling pretty harsh about this time too because the substantive problem is that Rep. Souder is, or at least was, a major leader and shaper of legislation aimed at preventing precisely the behavior he engaged in. And the nature of his role pretty much implies that he knew, understood, had access to, and a professional as well as personal interest in applying the most current and most effective abstinence-promoting, chastity-keeping, and fidelity-maintaining methods known. And yet knowing what he knew, and having access to what he had, it still didn’t work for him! And so presumably whatever it was he was promoting, and legislating, would almost certainly be even less likely to work for people with less knowledge and less support. You want a scandal? Well that’s the scandal!

One other thing, by the way. One that really does deserve singling out Souder for hypocrisy. Lewison says (emphasis mine)

GOP Rep. Mark Souder of Indiana — the leading advocate for abstinence education in Congress —  will resign after an affair with one of his female staffers became public.

He said it here.

If Souder had had even an ounce of the integrity he doesn’t just demand but also legislates for, he’d have resigned before his affair became public.

See also: Acronym Replacement: It’s Not IOKIYAR, It’s IJNNWACDI (It’s Just Not News When A Conservative Does It)

Three recent and/or current events provide a nice platform for examining if and when outing someone over their sexual orientation or inclination would be appropriate.

Disgraceful Outing

I’m pretty tolerant of outing figures who take stands against their own closeted situations. I’m not at all tolerant of outing people for one thing simply because they support or oppose an unrelated issue. So it’s particularly annoying to hear from Gabriel Arana of TAPPED that…

Looks like the nativist group Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) is getting desperate. William Gheen’s rant at a rally “outing” Sen. Lindsey Graham, who supports comprehensive immigration reform, has gone viral. Though Graham has said repeatedly that he is not gay (just single), ALIPAC insists on pushing this line. The organization sent out a press release praising Gheen for correcting the “information imbalance”:

When you have a U.S. Senator from such a conservative state like South Carolina working hand in hand with Obama and New York liberals like Senator Chuck Schumer to pass an Amnesty bill for illegal aliens, there is something very wrong.

So ALIPAC thinks the only possible reason Graham could support immigration reform is because liberals are holding his “alternative lifestyle” over his head? The logic here is so bizarre I have trouble seeing how Gheen could believe it himself.

Arana points out that Gheen’s using the exact intimidation tactic he’s accusing pro-immigration activists of using. (No surprise there since projection backed up by self-loathing is central to conservative character.)

Graceless Outing

If Mr. Gheen’s behavior is disgraceful, Babette Josephs’ insinuations about her primary candidate Gregg Kravitz was merely graceless. Talking Points Memo’s Rachel Slajda says longtime state legislator Babette Josephs is backing away from her prior accusation that the young man challenging her in the upcoming primary in her heavily LGBT Philadelphia district is straight!

Kravitz, who says he’s bisexual, is currently partners with a woman. Josephs considered that enough of a “gotcha” to call him a liar and brag that “I outed him as a straight person.” According to TPM’s Slajda she now says “I don’t even care, because a person’s sexuality has nothing to do with any of this.”

Which, of course, is perfectly true! Josephs herself appears to be the most actively pro-LGBT legislator in Pennsylvania even though she also appears to be 100% heterosexual. And meanwhile Kravitz might not end up being as effective a legislator even if he’s not 100% hetero.

Still, it’s approximately as graceless to assume that having, or having had, an opposite-sex partner makes one heterosexual as it would be to assume that a former or current partner of the same sex makes one homosexual.

Barely Regrettable Outing

On the other hand, when it comes to cases where a legislator or other public figure is aggressively and actively antagonistic to their own orientation or inclination, as with the closeted sex-purchasing of anti-prostitution activists David Vitter’s or Randall Tobias, or as with aggressive anti-homosexual activist legislator Roy Ashburn’s homosexuality, or family-values stalwart John Ensign’s affair? I feel pretty comfortable saying that when you make it your business it becomes everybody’s business what your business really is.

Paul Waldman of TAPPED wrote such a wonderful indictment of the IJNNWACDI tendency towards conservative perversion that I’m reproducing the whole thing here.

Via Steve Benen, we see that former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, who is challenging John McCain in the Republican Senate primary in Arizona, has some interesting ideas about what gay marriage will lead to:

“You see, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it started this move toward same-sex marriage, actually defined marriage — now get this — it defined marriage as simply, ‘the establishment of intimacy,’” Hayworth said. “Now how dangerous is that? I mean, I don’t mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point — I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse. It’s just the wrong way to go, and the only way to protect the institution of marriage is with that federal marriage amendment that I support.”

This kind of thing comes up with alarming frequency from Christian conservatives. For some of them, any issue of gay rights is about sex – — hot, steamy sex, so hot they can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve always said that James Dobson thinks about gay sex more than any five gay people I know put together. And apparently, people like Hayworth think that there is a tide of perversion lapping at our levees, and if we allow a crack in the edifice of heterosexual marriage, it will come down upon us like a tidal wave, drowning us with its forbidden temptations. I wonder what kind of thoughts led them there?

He said it here.

That sounds about right about James Dobson, and one suspects Fred Phelps thinks about it more than every other gay man in Kansas. Any time folks start going into lurid details or taking their proposed prohibitions to extreme lengths there’s gotta be at least a little fire behind all that smoke. Another example, one with almost universally horrific consequences are the white slave-owning men who, while regularly justifying violence against African American men for their “lust” for white women, also happened to have unrestricted and coercive access to African American women. Another example? I always wonder what’s really up when I hear of another regressive state legislator proposing one of those no-exceptions-for-rape-or-incest abortion restrictions. For instance one wonders how long it’ll be before a weeping Glenn Beck upbraids the likes of me for being all nonconsanguino-centerically privileged and just not understanding that, say, Louisiana state legislators deserve grandchildren just like people do. Now I’m forced to wonder whether J.D. Hayworth would support this petition drive... or if he’d change the subject and fulminate about government having no business interfering with private property rights. $%!#%~%

(Quick note, plus attempted guilt expiation for quoting his entire post: I don’t quote Paul Waldman often in this blog but if you’re into politics and social issues TAPPED is a great group blog and you can find a bunch of his other posts here. I particularly appreciated his post Pro-Lifers For More Abortions from yesterday.)